Part 3

"This here and now San Francisco is a real man's town", he said. "I don't know so much about the women, but the men certainly can have a better time here than in any other city in the country. And then again, a poor man can live in a way and do things in a style that would be impossible in New York. At my club I meet all kinds of men. Many of them are prominent citizens and many of them have large fortunes. I mix with them all. I don't mean to say I run constantly with the prom. cits. and the millionaires. I don't. I cant afford that. But they occasionally entertain me. And I as often entertain them. So many restaurants here are both inexpensive and good that I can return their hospitality self-respectingly and without undue expense. In New York I would not only never meet that type of man, but I could not afford to entertain him if I did."

Allied to this, perhaps, is a quality, typical of San Francisco, which I can describe only as promiscuity. That promiscuity is in its best phase a frankness; a fearlessness; a gorgeous candor which made possible the epigram that San Francisco has every vice but hypocrisy. Civically, two cross currents cut through the city's life; one of, a high visioned enlightenment which astounds the visiting stranger by its force, its white-fire enthusiasm; the other a black sordidness and soddenness which displays but one redeeming quality--the characteristic San Franciscan candor. That openness is physical as well as spiritual. The city, dropped over its many hills like a great loose cobweb weighted thickly with the pearl cubes of buildings, with its wide streets; its frequent parks; its broad-spaced residential areas; its gardened houses in which high windows crystallize every view and sun parlors or sleeping porches catch both the first and last hint of daylight--the city itself has the effect of living in the open. Everybody is frankly interested in everybody else and in what is going on. Of all the cities the country, San Francisco is by weather and temperament, most adapted to the pleasant French habit of open-air eating. The clients in the barber shops, lathered like clowns and trussed up in what is perhaps the least heroic posture and costume possible for man, are seated at the windows, where they may enjoy the outside procession during the boresome processes of the shave and the hair-cut. In the windows of the downtown shops, with no pretence whatever of the curtains customary in the East, men clerks disrobe and re-robe life-sized female models of an appalling nude flesh-likeness. They dress these helpless ladies in all the fripperies of femininity from the wax out, oblivious to the flippant comments of gathering crowds. It's all a part of that civic candor somehow. Nowhere I think are eyes so clear, glances so direct and expressions so frank as in California. Nowhere is conversation and discussion more straightforward and courageous.

All that I have written thus far is only by way of preliminary to showing you what the background of the Native Son has been and to explaining why Europe does not dazzle him much and the East not at all. Remember that he is instinctively an athlete and that he has never dissipated his magnificent strength in fighting weather. If he is a little--mind you, I say only a little--inclined to use that strength on more entertaining dissipation, he is as likely to restore the balance by much physical exercise.

There I go again! Enormous! Superb! Splendid! Spacious! You see how impossible it is to keep your vocabulary down when California is your subject. Another moment and I shall be saying more unique.

Remember that all his life he has gazed on beauty--beauty tragic and haunting, beauty gorgeous and gay. Remember he is accustomed to enormous sizes; superb heights; splendid distances; spacious vistas. That California does not produce an annual crop of megalo-maniacs is the best argument I know for the superiority of heredity over environment.

Remember, too, that all his life the Native Son has soaked in an art atmosphere potentially as strong and individual as ancient Greece or renaissance Italy. The dazzling country side, the sulphitic brew of races, the cosmopolitan "city" have taken care of that. That art-spirit accounts for such minor California phenomena as photography raised to unequalled art levels and shops whose simple beautiful interiors resemble the private galleries of art collectors; it accounts for such major phenomena as the Stevenson monument, the "Lark", the annual Grove Play of the Bohemian Club, and the Exposition of 1915.

The tiny monument to Stevenson, tucked away in a corner soaked with romantic memories--Portsmouth Square--compares favorably with the charming memorials to the French dead. It is a thing of beautiful proportions. A little stone column supports a bronze ship, its sails bellying robustly to the whip of the Pacific winds. The inscription--a well known quotation from the author--is topped simply by "To remember Robert Louis Stevenson."

Perhaps you will object that some of these are not Native Sons. But hush! Californians consider anybody who has stayed five minutes in the State--a real Californian. And believe us, Reader, by that time most of them have become not Californians but Californiacs.

The "Lark" is perhaps the most delicious bit of literary fooling that this country has ever produced. It raised its blythe song at the Golden Gate, but it was heard across a whole continent. For two years, Gelett Burgess, Bruce Porter, Porter Garnett, Willis Polk, Ernest Peixotto, and Florence Lundborg performed in it all the artistic antics that their youth, their originality, their high spirits suggested. Professor Norton, speaking to a class at Harvard University, and that the two literary events of the decade between 1890 and 1900 were the fiction of the young Kipling and the verse that appeared in the "Lark."

The Grove-Play is an annual incident of which I fancy only California could be capable. Of course the calculable quality of the weather helps in this possibility. But the art-spirit, born and bred in the Californian, is the driving force. Every year the Bohemian Club produces in its summer annex--a beautiful grove of redwoods beside the Russian river--a play in praise of the forest. The stage is a natural one, a cleared hill slope with redwoods for wings. The play is written, staged, produced and acted by members of the club. The incidental music is also written by them. Scarcely has one year's play been produced before the rehearsals for the next begin. The result is a performance of a finished beauty which not only astounds Easterners, but surprises Europeans. Although undoubtedly it is the best, it is only one of numberless out-of-door masques, plays and pageants produced all over California.

As for the Exposition of 1915, when I say that for many Californians, it will take the edge off some of the beauty of Europe, I am quite serious. For it was colored in the gorgeous gamut of the Orient, clamant yellows, oranges, golds, combined with mysterious blues, muted scarlets. And it was illuminated as no Exposition has ever before been illuminated; with lights that dripped down from the cornices of the buildings; or shot up from their foundations; or gleamed through transparent pillars; or glistened behind tumbling waters; or sparkled within leaping fountains. Some of this light even floated from enormous braziers, thereby filling the night with clouds of mist-flame; or flooded across the bay from reservoirs of tinted glass, thereby sluicing the whole dream-world with fluid color. All this was reflected in still lakes and quiet pools. The procession of one year's seasons gradually subdued its gorgeousness to an effect of antiquity, toned but still colorful. The quick-growing California vines covered it with an age-old luxuriance of green. As for the architecture--I repeat that the Californian, seeing for the first time the square of St. Peter's in Rome and of St. Mark's in Venice, is likely to suffer a transitory but definite sense of disappointment. For the big central court of the Exposition held suggestions of both these squares. It seemed quite as old and permanent. And it was much more striking in situation, with the bay offering an immense, flat blue extension at one side and the city hills, pricked with lights, slanting up and away from the other. By day, the joyous, whimsical fantasy of the colossal Tower of Jewels, which caught the light in millions of rainbow sparkles, must, for children at least, have made of its entrance the door to fairyland. At night, there was the tragedy of old history about those faintly fiery facades... those enormous shadow-haunted hulks. ..

Remember, last of all, as naturally as from infancy the Native Son has breathed the tonic and toxic air of California, he has breathed the spirit of democracy. That spirit of democracy is so strong, indeed, that the enfranchised women of California give intelligent guidance to the feminists of a whole nation; public opinion is so enlightened that it sets a pace for the rest of the country and labor is so progressive that it is a revelation to the visiting sociologist.

Indeed, nowhere in the whole world, I fancy, is labor so healthy, so happy, so prosperous. California brings to the workers' problems the free enlightened attitude characteristic of her. As between on the one hand hordes of unemployed; huge slums; poverty spots; and on the other a well-paid laboring class with fair hours, she chooses the latter, thereby storing up for herself eugenic capital.

I have always wished that California would strike off a series of medals symbolic of some of the Utopian conditions which prevail there. I would like to suggest a model for one. I was walking once in the vicinity of the Ferry with a woman who knows the labor movement of California as well as an outsider may. Suddenly she whispered in my ear, "Oh look! Isn't he a typical California labor man?"

It was his noon hour and, in his shirt sleeves, he was leaning against the wall, a pipe in his mouth. He was tall and lean; not an ounce of superfluous flesh on his splendid frame, but a great deal of muscle that lay in long, faintly swelling contours against it. He was black haired and black-mustached; both hair and mustache were lightly touched with grey. His thicklashed blue eyes sparkled as clear and happy as a child's. In their expression and, indeed, in the whole relaxed attitude of his fine, long figure, was an entertained, contented interest, an amused tolerance of the passing crowd. You will see this type, among others equally fine, again and again, in the unions of California.

Yes, that spirit of democracy is not only strong but militant.

Militant! I never could make up my mind which made the fightingest reading in the San Francisco papers, the account of Friday's boxing contest or of Monday's meeting of the Board of Supervisors. They do say that a visiting Easterner was taken to the Board of Supervisors one afternoon. In the evening he was regaled with a battle royal. And, and--they do say--he fell asleep at the battle royal because it seemed so tame in comparison with the Board of Supervisors.

The athletic instinct in the Native Son accounts for the star athletes, boxers, tennis players, ball players; that art instinct for the painters, illustrators, sculptors, playwrights, fiction writers, poets, actors, photographers, producers; that spirit of democracy for the labor leaders and politicians with whom California has inundated the rest of the country.

I started to make a list of the famous Californians in all these classes. But, when I had filled one sheet with names, realizing that no matter how hard I cudgelled my memory, I would inevitably forget somebody of importance, I tore it up. Take a copy of "Who's Who" and cut out the lives of all those who don't come from California and see what a respectable-sized volume you have left.

If any woman tourist should ask me what was the greatest menace to the peace of mind of a woman travelling alone in California, I should answer instantly--the Native Son. I wish I could draw a picture of him. Perhaps he's too good looking. Myself, I think the enfranchised women of California should bring injunctions--or whatever is the proper legal weapon--against so dangerous a degree of male pulchritude. Of course the Native Son could reply that, in this respect, he has nothing on the Native Daughter, she being without doubt the most beautiful woman in the world. To, this, however, she could retort that that is as it should be, but it's no fair for mere men to be stealing her stuff.

This is misleading!

That agglomeration of the Anglo-Saxon, the Celt and the Latin, has endowed the Native Son with the pulchritude of all three races. In eugenic combination with Ireland, California is peculiarly happy. The climate has made him tall and big. His athletic habits has made him shapely and strong. Both have given him clear eyes, a smooth skin, swift grace of motion. Those clear eyes invest him with a look of innocence and unsophistication. He is as rich in dimples as though they had been shaken onto him from a salt-cellar. One in each cheek, one in his chin--count them--three! The Native Daughter would have a license to complain of this if she herself didn't look as thou she'd been sprinkled with dimples from a pepper-caster. In addition--oh, but what's the use? Who ever managed to paint the lily with complimentary words or gild refined gold with fancy phrases? The region bounded by Post, Bush, Mason and Taylor Streets contains San Francisco's most famous clubs. Any Congress of Eugenists wishing to establish a standard of male beauty for the human race has only to place a moving-picture machine at the entrance of any one of these--let us say the Athletic Club. The results will at the same time enrapture and discourage a dazzled world. I will prophesy that some time those same enfranchised women of California are going to realize the danger of such a sight bursting unexpectedly on the unprepared woman tenderfoot. Then they'll rope off that dangerous area, establish guards at the corners and put up "Stop! Look! Listen!" signs where they'll do the most good. And as proof of all these statements, I refer you to that array of young gods, filing endlessly over the sporting pages of the California newspapers.

And I'll pay for the privilege. What the Chamber of Commerce ought to do, though, is to advertise that this concession will be put up at auction. Indeed, if this sale were made an annual event, women bidders would flock to California from all over the world.

A Native Son told me once that he had been given the star-assignment of newspaper history. Somebody offered a prize to the most beautiful daughter of California. And his job was to travel all over the State to inspect the candidates. He said it was a shame to take his pay and I agreed that it was sheer burglary. All I've got to say is that if anybody wants to offer a prize for the handsomest Native Son in California, I'll give my services as judge. I will add that after nearly two years of war-time Europe, in which I have had an opportunity to study some of the best military material of England, France, Italy, Portugal, Spain and Switzerland--the Native Son leads them all. I am inclined to think he is the best physical specimen in the world.

But there is a great deal more to the Native Son than mere comeliness. That long list of nationally-famous Californians proves this in one way, the high average of his citizenship in another. Physically he is a big, strong, high-geared, high-powered racing machine; and he has an inexhaustible supply of energy for motive fluid and an extraordinary degree of initiative and enterprise for driving forces. That initiative and enterprise spring part from his inalienable pep, his vivid interest in life; and part from that constructive looseness of the social structure, which gives them both full play. If the Native Son sees anything he wants to do, he instantly does it. If he sees anything that he wants to get, he promptly takes it. If he sees anything that he wants to be, he immediately is it. He saunters into New York in a degage way and takes the whole city by storm. He strolls through Europe with an insouciant air and finds it almost as good as California. All this, supplemented by his abiding conviction that California must have the most and best and biggest of everything, accounts for what California has done in the sixty-odd years of her existence, accounts for what San Francisco has done in the decade since her great disaster, accounts for that wartime Exposition; perhaps the most elaborate, certainly the most beautiful the world has ever seen.

The Native Son has a strong sense of humor and he invents his own slang. He expresses himself with the picturesqueness of diction inevitable to the West and with much of its sly, dry humor. But there is a joyous quality to the San Francisco blague which sets it apart, even in the West. You find its counterpart only in Paris. Perhaps it is that, being reenforced by wit, it explodes more quickly than the humor of the rest of the country. The Californian with his bulk, his beauty, his boast and his blague descending on New York is very like the native of the Midi who with similar qualities, is always taking Paris by storm. Marseilles, the chief metropolis of the Midi, has a famous promenade--less than half a dozen blocks, packed tight with the peoples and colors and odors of two continents--called the Cannebiere. The Marseillais, returning from his first visit to Paris, remarks with condescending scorn that Paris has no Cannebiere. Of course Paris has her network of Grand Boulevards but--So the Californiac patronizingly discovers that New York has no Market Street, no Golden Gate Park, no Twin Peaks, no Mt. Tamalpais, no seals. Above all--and this is the final thrust--New York is flat.

Somebody ought to invent a serum that renders the victim immune.

Some day medical journals will give the same space to the victims of California hospitality that they now allot to victims of Oriental famines. For with Californians, hospitality is first an instinct, then an art, then a religion and finally a mania. It is utterly impossible to resist it, but it takes a strong constitution to survive. Californians will go to any length or trouble in this matter; their hospitality is all mixed up with their art instinct and their sense of humor. For no matter what graceful tribute they pay to famous visiting aliens, its formality is always leavened by their delicious wit. And no matter how much fun they poke at departing or returning friends, it is always accompanied by some social tribute of great charm and originality.